A biased look at psychology in the world

Health

November 30, 2017

“The broken heart. You think you will die, but you keep living, day after day after terrible day.” - Charles Dickens

According to Center For Disease Control statistics, suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States with an estimated 44,193 Americans killing themselves each year. But that may well be the tip of the iceberg considering that only one in 25 suicide attempts will actually be fatal. As well, there may be no way to tell how many deaths believed to be due to natural causes or accidents are actually suicides. Still, while health statistics confirm that more people than ever are attempting suicide, advances in emergency medicine and new research into the psychological roots of suicide may succeed in reversing this trend.

While researchers have identified different risk factors for suicide, relationship or marital problems seem to stand out in particular. Not only are people dealing with relationship abuse or emotional conflict at particular risk for suicide attempts, but studies also show that terminating a relationship can boost suicide risk as well. In the same way that being in a committed relationship helps protect against stress or depression, this same sense of commitment may become dangerous once that relationship dissolves. Since any romantic relationship requires a significant investment of time, emotional bonding, shared friendship, and property, the sudden end of any relationship can have serious consequences.

November 22, 2017

Since post-traumatic headache is one of the most prevalent and long-lasting post-concussion sequelae, causes significant morbidity, and might be associated with slower neurocognitive recovery, a new study in the Journal of Headache and Pain evaluated the use of concussion screening scores in a concussion clinic population to assess for post-traumatic headache. Using a retrospective cross-sectional study of 254 concussion patients from the New York University (NYU) Concussion Registry, data on the headache characteristics, concussion mechanism, concussion screening scores were collected and analyzed. Results showed that 72% of the patients had post-traumatic headache. About half (56.3%) were women. The mean age was 35 (SD 16.2). 90 (35%) patients suffered from sport-related concussions (SRC). Daily post-traumatic headache patients had higher Sport Concussion Assessment Tool (SCAT)-3 symptom severity scores than the non-daily post-traumatic headache and the headache-free patients (50.2 [SD 28.2] vs. 33.1 [SD 27.5] vs. 21.6 SD23], p < 0.001). Patients with SRC had lower headache intensity (4.47 [SD 2.5] vs. 6.24 [SD 2.28], p < 0.001) and SCAT symptom severity scores (33.9 [SD 27.4] vs. 51.4 [SD 27.7], p < 0.001) than the other patients, but there were no differences in post-traumatic headache prevalence, frequency, and Standardized Assessment of Concussion (SAC) scores. Researchers concluded that the presence and frequency of post-traumatic headache are associated with the SCAT-3 symptom severity score, which is the most important predictor for post-concussion recovery. The SCAT-3 symptom severity score might be a useful tool to help characterize patients’ post-traumatic headache. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved)

November 21, 2017

A new research study suggests that elderly people dealing with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) may have an increased risk of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD). The study, which was recently published in the American Thoracic Society's American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, examined OSA due to previous research suggesting that it might accelerate cognitive decline in people at risk for AD. According to lead researcher Ricardo S. Osorio, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry at New York University School of Medicine, proving a causal link has been difficult up to now since OSA and AD often share risk factors and commonly coexist.

The study examined 208 participants aged 55 to 90 using a series of clinical tests including sleep testing to monitor breathing while they slept. None of the participants had been previously diagnosed with OSA or had other medical conditions that might have affected study results. Results showed that more than half of the participants had some form of OSA with 16.8 percent having moderate to severe breathing problems at night.

Of these, 104 participants then took part in a two-year study that included undergoing lumbar punctures to obtain cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) as well as PET scans to measure amyloid beta plaque deposits in the brain. Amyloid beta is a peptide that has been implicated in the development of cognitive problems linked to dementia. Research findings showed a significant correlation between OSA severity and decreased amyloid beta peptides in the CSF over time as well as increased amyloid deposits in the brain.

Surprisingly enough however, OSA doesn't appear to predict cognitive deterioration in healthy adults. According to study coauthor Andrew Varga of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, the measures use may not pick up on the very subtle cognitive changes often found in the very early stages of AD. As for cognitive changes that can be detected, there is no reliable way of telling them apart from the cognitive problems linked to lack of sleep.

Though much more research is needed, these results suggest that standard OSA treatments such as CPAP, dental appliances, and positional therapy may help delay dementia in older adults. "Results from this study, and the growing literature suggesting that OSA, cognitive decline and AD are related, may mean that age tips the known consequences of OSA from sleepiness, cardiovascular, and metabolic dysfunction to brain impairment," Dr. Osorio said in a recent interview. "If this is the case, then the potential benefit of developing better screening tools to diagnose OSA in the elderly who are often asymptomatic is enormous."

Considering that AD and other forms of dementia already affect millions of people worldwide, a number that will certainly increase as Baby Boomers grow older, finding better ways of helping patients cope with memory loss can play a critical role in future health care.

November 19, 2017

On June 7, 1888, newspapers across the midwestern United States carried an odd story. Titled, "Herman Harms Awakens At Last From His Long Slumber", the story described how Utica, Minnesota farmer was finally awake after a very long nap. How long you ask? Well, at the time of his awakening, he had been sleeping steadily for the previous six years and that was far from the first of the long naps he had taken.

Born in Hanover, Germany in 1838, he emigrated to the United States in 1869 and eventually settled St. Clare, Illinois. A strong, healthy man, he earned enough through his labour to buy two prosperous farms along with supporting his wife, Geske, and growing family. With no history of previous medical issues or health problems in his family, there was certainly nothing remarkable about Herman Harms's life until his strange medical problem first began. He certainly didn't have any unhealthy habits since he completely abstained from tobacco and alcohol. In spite of all this however, he was struck down with a mystery illness in 1875. Given the initial symptoms he displayed (fever, chills, and sweating), one doctor diagnosed him with "ague", a common term for malaria at the time. After weeks of bedrest, his symptoms had become so severe that his family sent all the way to St. Louis for a specialist who could help. But none of those very expensive doctors were able to do much for him.

Largely out of desperation,Harms decided to take the advice of one doctor who advised him to sell off his property and move to Minnesota. According to this piece of medical advice, the "bracing atmosphere of the northern Minnesota climate would drive the ague and malaria from his bones." And it worked (temporarily). After transplanting his family to St. Charles, Minnesota where he bought a new farm, Harms appeared to make a complete recovery and was soon working as hard as ever. Unfortunately, this respite only lasted three years when he was struck by a high fever of unknown origin. Fearing that his ague had returned, his wife began tending him as she had before. He then sank into a deep sleep that would last for years.

As for what was happening to cause this long sleep, nobody had any idea. Along with the numerous medical doctors called in by the Harms family, their farm became a target for curiosity-seekers all hoping for a glimpse of the "Minnesota Marvel" and newspapers across the country compared his case to the Washington Irving story of Rip Van Winkle. Through it all, Herman's wife, Geske, (who never seems to be identified by name in these news stories) continued to act as his full-time nurse. Also, given that this was in an era before intravenous feeding, keeping him from starving to death in his sleep remained a major problem. Though family members and friends were able to force some meat into his throat, he always vomited it up again. It was only at midnight, when his sleeping state seemed lightest, when Geske was able to rouse him enough to feed him the little gruel she was able to get him to swallow. Since this was hardly enough for a grown man his size, he began wasting away.

And then, three years after his strange sleep first began, Herman Harms woke up again and seemed incredulous when his family told him he had been asleep for so long. He was only convinced after seeing his haggard face in the mirror and the amount of weight he had lost. Though he tried to make up for lost time by working steadily around the farm, he had a relapse three months after first waking up. According to his wife who described what happened to a reporter, he just fell to the floor in a heap one day and only responded dazedly when she told him to lie down on the sofa where he then fell asleep. Nobody thought anything was seriously wrong until the following morning when they tried to wake him for breakfast.

Through all of this, his family had to deal with the financial consequences of Herman Harms' long sleep. This included the eventual loss of their farm and having to move to Utica, Minnesota where they were primarily supported by Harms' eldest son. As for Geske, she continued to care for her husband except for six months when he was transferred to a hospital for the insane in Rochester. Due to his lack of progress there, she then took him home where he remained ever since.

In an 1888 news story released just a few months before Harms' new awakening, a reporter described what he saw when he visited the sleeping man. "Today, the man who ten years ago weighed 190 good, round, pounds would no more than balance the beam at the eighty pound notch. He is hardly more than a skeleton." He also described Harm's "mass of unkempt hair as black as night" and eyes that were "sunken under heavy black eyebrows." The reporter noted that his eyelids moved "up and down with a nervous restlessness that is noticed only in the orbs of the Albino." The article went on to describe other quirks such as the sleeping man's including feet that remained cold no matter how they were wrapped, an immunity to pain (even when a pin was stuck in his body), and changes in his breathing depending on the amount of moisture in the air.

Before giving up on medicine completely, the Harms family allowed numerous bizarre remedies to be applied, including one attempt to wake him by running an electric current through his extremities (it didn't work). By 1888 however, his wife had long since given up trying to get her husband to take medication (most of which they could no longer afford anyway). As for his dramatic awakening in 1888 that generated headlines across the country, that didn't seem to last long either and he was soon asleep again within months. And this is pretty much the pattern he would follow for the rest of his life according to later news stories. Life eventually became a little easier for Herman and his wife as their adult children became old enough to support their aging parents. They were even able to move to a new farm owned by their oldest son. Despite that, Herman's brief awakenings hardly seemed to matter considering how frail his long sleep had left him. Along with his weakened muscles, his digestive organs had long atrophied to the point of not being able to take in anything more substantial than gruel. Through it all, he continued to cling to life and the last news story I could find about this strange case had him still sleeping away in 1899. A search of grave records suggests he died in 1916 at the age of 78, ironically outliving Geske by two years. Whether he died in his sleep or not isn't recorded.

So what can be said about this strange case? None of the countless doctors who had assessed him over the years had ever been able to come up with a satisfactory diagnosis. While his symptoms seem to suggest some form of encephalitis lethargica , a.k.a., "sleeping sickness", there is no way to becertain. Despite the publicity surrounding the Minnesota Marvel (including numerous offers from sideshow promoters to put him on display), his case is virtually unknown today. All that can really be said about Herman Harm's case is that it demonstrates the very human cost involved when a bizarre illness such as this can strike without warning. Not to mention the terrible burden often assumed by devoted family members as a result.

November 16, 2017

A new study published in the International Journal of Rehabilitation Research investigated the following free-text terms: commercial games, video games, exergames, serious gaming, rehabilitation games, PlayStation, Nintendo, Wii, Wii Fit, Xbox, and Kinect. The search was limited to peer-reviewed English journals. The beginning of the search time frame was not restricted and the end of the search time frame was 31 December 2015. Only randomized controlled trial, cohort, and observational studies evaluating the effect of VGs on physical rehabilitation were included in the review. A total of 4728 abstracts were screened, 275 were fully reviewed, and 126 papers were eventually included. The following information was extracted from the selected studies: device type, number and type of patients, intervention, and main outcomes. The integration of VGs into physical rehabilitation has been tested for various pathological conditions, including stroke, cerebral palsy, Parkinson’s disease, balance training, weight loss, and aging. There was large variability in the protocols used (e.g. number of sessions, intervention duration, outcome measures, and sample size). The results of this review show that in most cases, the introduction of VG training in physical rehabilitation offered similar results as conventional therapy. Therefore, VGs could be added as an adjunct treatment in rehabilitation for various pathologies to stimulate patient motivation. VGs could also be used at home to maintain rehabilitation benefits.

November 02, 2017

Although the relationship between childhood adversity (CA) and depression is widely accepted, there is little information on what proportion of depression is attributable to CA. A new research study published in the Journal of Affective Disorders used a Swedish cohort of 478,141 individuals born in 1984–1988 in Sweden. Register-based CA indicators included parental death, parental substance abuse and psychiatric morbidity, parental criminality, parental separation, public assistance recipiency, child welfare intervention, and residential instability. Estimates of risk of depression, measured as retrieval of prescribed antidepressants and/or psychiatric care with a clinical diagnosis of depression, between 2006 and 2012 were calculated as Hazard Ratios (HR) with 95% confidence intervals (CI), using a Cox regression analysis. Results showed that all CAs predicted depression in early adulthood. Furthermore, the predictive association between the CA indicators and depression was graded, with highest HRs observed for 4+ CAs (HR: 3.05 (95% CI 2.83–3.29)) for a clinical diagnosis for depression and HR: 1.32 (95% CI 1.25–1.41) for antidepressant medication after adjustments were made for important confounding factors. Of the studied CAs, child welfare intervention entailed highest HR for depression. Regardless of causality issues, children and youth with a history of multiple CA should be regarded as a high-risk group for depression by professionals in social, and health services that come into contact with this group.

November 01, 2017

How active are you really? Answering that question may be harder than you think.

Certainly medical studies have long demonstrated that physical inactivity can account for one in ten deaths worldwide. With that in mind, the need to stay active has been drilled into us by countless media campaigns, school and workplace programs, and repeated warnings from family physicians whenever we get a checkup. Unfortunately, that lesson doesn't seem to be sinking in with 79 percent of adults in the United States alone not meeting minimum exercise guidelines. As a result, the World Health Organization suggests that the number of deaths that can be linked to physical inactivity will rise sharply over the next twenty years.

Still, new research suggests that the way people perceive their level of physical activity can also play an important role in shaping physical health as actual exercise does. For example, many people may be more physically fit than they realize given the amount of time they spend on their feet all day or their regular level of activity doing their jobs. Despite this regular activity however, they may not see themselves as physically fit because they aren't exercising as they are told they should. In the same way, new studies have yielded intriguing conclusions about the role that perception can play on stress, aging, and even mortality. For example, stress researchers have found that highly stressed U.S. adults who perceive stress as being harmful are 43 percent more likely to die prematurely than highly stressed adults who don't share that perception. On the other hand, people who view stress as healthy tend to much more adaptive when dealing with acute stress.

But what about perceived physical activity, i.e., whether or not we regard ourselves as physically active as other people our age? Could it have a positive effect on health and mortality rates? A new study published in the journal Health Psychology suggests that it can. Using comprehensive medical data from three nationwide surveys with a total sample size of 61,411 U.S. adults, Octavia H. Zahrt and Alia J. Crum of Stanford University have demonstrated that perceived physical activity can play a dramatic role in quality of life over time.

October 26, 2017

Marriages are often characterized by their positive and negative features in terms of whether they elicit feelings of satisfaction and happiness or conflict and negativity. Although research has examined thedevelopment of marital happiness, less is known about the development of negativity among married couples. A new article in the journal Developmental Psychology examines how marital tension (i.e., feelings of tension, resentment, irritation) develops within couples over time and whether marital tension has unique implications for divorce. Specifically, researchers examined marital tension among husbands and wives within the same couples from the first to the sixteenth year of marriage, as well as links between marital tension and divorce. Participants included 355 couples assessed in years 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, and 16 of marriage. Multilevel models revealed that wives reported greater marital tension than husbands. Marital tension increased over time among both husbands and wives, with a greater increase among husbands. Couples were more likely to divorce when wives reported higher marital tension, a greater increase in marital tension, and greater cumulative marital tension. Findings are consistent with the emergent distress model of marriage, but indicate that despite the greater increases in marital tension among husbands, wives’ increased marital tension over the course of marriage is more consistently associated with divorce

October 19, 2017

The relation between self-esteem and romantic relationships has been the focus of many research studies. A new article published in European Psychologist examines theoretical perspectives and available evidence on (a) the effect of people’s self-esteem on the quality of their romantic relationships, (b) the effect of self-esteem similarity between partners on relationship quality, and (c) the psychological mechanisms that might account for the link between self-esteem and relationship quality. Overall, the evidence suggests that high self-esteem is beneficial in romantic relationships. Furthermore, research using data from both partners of couples suggests that high self-esteem has a positive effect also on the partner’s happiness with the relationship. However, research indicates that the degree of self-esteem similarity between partners does not influence the couple’s relationship satisfaction. Although evidence suggests that perceived regard and secure attachment between the partners explains why self-esteem is beneficial in romantic relationships, future research is needed to examine in more detail the mechanisms through which self-esteem contributes to a happy relationship.

October 15, 2017

Romantic breakups are an inevitable part of living, no matter how painful they can be.

Along with eliciting a wide range of emotions, including anger, sadness, and shame, surviving a breakup can mean potential health problems as well. These can include insomnia, reduced immune functioning, depression, and even the temporary heart condition known as "broken heart syndrome." How severe these symptoms can be often depends on the strength of the romantic relationship and how traumatic the breakup itself was.

According to the triangular theory of love first proposed by psychologist Robert J. Sternberg, passion, intimacy, and commitment can interact in different ways to form a typology of different kinds of love experience. Of these different kinds of love, the most well known are infatuation (passionate love) and attachment (companionate love). Romantic couples can progress through different types of love over the course of a relationships (for example, passionate love is most commonly seen in the early stages in a relationship before settling into the more stable companionate form). This also means that the feelings that result from infatuation (whether mutual or one-sided) can be very different from what people in a long-term relationship may experience. It also means that emotional pain that occurs after a breakup can be very different as well.

Which brings us to the painful process of working through heartache. Though dealing with a romantic breakup can take considerable time and effort, research studies looking at romantic relationships and breakups that identify specific strategies people have used to overcome heartache, some of which seem to be more effective than others. And a new study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General tests three of these coping strategies from a neuroscience perspective to see how well they actually work.